Whats the humdrum about Chaps? Adventures into Victorian Science Fiction and Steampunk with ramblings about Aeronefs, Dirigibles, Land Ironclads, Anarchists, Dinosaur Hunting, Terranefs, Aquanefs, Mad Scientists, and all manner of electric contraptions and steam conveyances. It may not make sense, but there will be claret and a nice cheese board at the end. Tally-Ho and "Vôtre dans une sauce au vin blanc!"

Tuesday, 30 September 2008

I found this interesting short essay online (link below), which details has some interesting aspects about character interactions in 20kluts.

-----------Summary: Science is meant for the progression of man, but using science for evil can also lead to the downfall of men. In 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne, a scientific fiction novel, that explains the conflict between man vs nature, there are conflicts in the story, the conflict effects the surrounding characters.

Science is meant for the progression of man, but using science for evil can also lead to the downfall of men. In 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne, a scientific fiction novel, that explains the conflict between man vs nature. There are conflicts in the story, the conflict effects the surrounding characters, but in the end, the conflict is resolved.

The novel, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, is generally about a ship called the Nautilus, who is led by Captain Nemo, which reeks chaos and terror amount the sea. The characters: Dr. Pierre Aronnax, Conseil, and Ned Land are imprisoned in the ship, which is the main conflict in the story. The main character, Aronnax, and the antagonist, Captain Nemo, the main conflict between them is the concept of freedom. Even though Aronnax is fond of the science, he does not approve of the way Captain Nemo attacks and kill innocent people. Captain Nemo is mysterious and paranoid, his hatred for mankind is because of their corruption. “So it was a sad day I spent, between my wish to regain freedom and my regret at saying goodbye to the marvelous Nautilus…” –Aronnax. This quote represents Aronnax’s main conflict, he cannot stay with the Nautilus because he must help his friends, even though he is fascinated by the knowledge he can obtain by the Nautilus. The conflict between Aronnax and Captain Nemo is that Captain Nemo is keeping Aronnax’s friends captives of the ship. The main conflict of Aronnax is that he has to choose between science vs the freedom of his fellow man.

The conflict between Aronnax and Captain Nemo effect the characters around them. Aronnax effect his fellow crewman, Ned Land, because Aronnax is too busy using the opportunities that he receives from the Nautilus to study science, while Ned Land prefers to plan a way to successfully escape the Nautilus. Not only does Ned Land want to escape the ship, but also he dislikes the way Captain Nemo kills whales. Ned Land states that he is a hunter, not a butcher. Aronnax also effects his servant, Conseil, because since Aronnax’s actions also effect Conseil’s action because Conseil is a servant that is always loyal and never complains to his master, Aronnax, so whatever Aronnax chooses to do, that action will also have a chain effect on Conseil’s actions. Conseil is so loyal that he would stay to Aronnax till the end. This is the same idea how Captain Nemo effects his crewmembers also because they too are loyal to Captain Nemo and are willing to do anything for him, even commit suicide in the whirlpool.

The conflict is resolved in the end, when Captain Nemo commits suicide by getting his ship along with his crewmembers intentionally caught in the raging whirlpool. Even though Captain Nemo and his crewmembers are probably dead, but fortunately Aronnax, Ned Land, and Conseil manage to escape the ship in time and are rescued by fishermen. Aronnax, though his journey with the Nautilus is over and also has lost the chance of a life time to study marine life more extensively because having Nautilus’s ability causes more quality study of the marine life. In the end, Aronnax chooses the freedom of his fellowman over science, but Aronnax doesn’t leave empty handed because he learned so much from his journey, such as the marine life and submarine construction. While returning to France, Aronnax rewrites his memories and wisdom of his journey under the sea.

In conclusion, not all science benefit men, they sometimes corrupt them and cause them to create terror among the innocent. The conflict in the story effect and change the characters, but in the end, the conflict is eventually resolved. The conflict of the story causes the characters to react in their own way, which shows the quality of each character.

Monday, 29 September 2008

Thank you to all who have visited and enjoyed the material here, and especially those who have left comments and kept encouraging us to keep posting.

I would particularly like to thank my fellow WWS authors for their great input, helped keep me on track and ticked things over here for me in the times when I couldn't. Their contributions and fellowship gives White Wine Sauce real diversity through a team effort.

But most of all I would like to thank the true genius of White Wine Sauce - Mssrs Wells, Verne, Griffith, Burroughs, Doyle and the other greats of VSF who have inspired generations of fans and given us many hours of enjoyment.

I went to a charity book fair today which had many interesting finds. My disappointment at not finding any Verne was more than offset by acquiring the collected works of H.G. Wells in leatherbound volumes - Huzzah!

Friday, 26 September 2008

At the beginning of the Victorian era it seemed that the sun would never set on the vast British Empire which spanned the globe. However, the Pax Britannica was not all that it seemed and the forces of Her Imperial Majesty were frequently called upon to fend of aggressor nations and quell rebellions in Britain’s many colonies.

In an age before computers, television, radio and the cinema the impact of cartoons and caricature was considerable, especially when the only sources of information were posters, newspapers and books. To a news-hungry public, anxious about world affairs, it was the cartoon, with its immediacy and universal accessibility – even to the barely literate – that could speak the message mere words could never convey.During the Crimean War it was John Leech and his colleagues at Punch who drew their own satirical version of events. And who could take Tsar Nicholas of Russia, Paul Kruger of the Transvaal or the Mad Mahdi of the Sudan at all seriously when the artists of Fun, Judy, Moonshine, Vanity Fair and others cocked a snook at all they held dear? However, Britain’s enemies also had a wealth of talent laboring to counteract imperial propaganda and there were frequent, often vicious, attacks on Queen Victoria and her generals, admirals and politicians in French and German satirical magazines such as Simplicissimus, Le Grelot and Lustiger Blatter.

Wars of Empire in Cartoons is divided into chapters covering the main conflicts of the second half of the 19th century year-by-year. Each chapter is prefaced with a concise introduction that provides a historical framework for the cartoons of that year. Altogether some 300 drawings from both sides of each conflict have been skillfully blended to produce a unique visual history of the wars of the British Empire.

Sunday, 14 September 2008

TMP spies have declared that recent land ironclad actions in South Carolina have been most prolific, thanks to the South Carolina Historical Gaming Society. Reports also indicate a new kind of Ironclad model, more akin to gunboat monitors - Chris says :

On this site are several pictures from a couple of LI games that we recently played here in South Carolina, USA. In some of the pics you can see 8 land ironclads that I made by mating 1/1200 ACW ships with 1/300 WWII tank hulls. They are the ones on the longer lighter-green bases. The USS Cairo class ships on top of the KV hulls was a really easy conversion. For them all I had to do was cut the bow and stern peices off of the ships and file the Fuel tanks off of the soviet tank hulls. (text from TMP here: http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=147274)

Tuesday, 9 September 2008

An interesting short article, which winds up rather badly for the Baron after he "had gone ashore that night to visit a lady friend, leaving his ship with torpedoes disarmed, all shells stowed save 12 and no extra men posted on watch."

later...

"The two disgraced officers were court-martialed for negligence and summarily stripped of all their ranks and privileges as well as being given a 3 year and 18 month prison sentences respectively. Tsar Nicholas II also went so far as to decree that the Baron was to be sentenced to perpetual bachelorhood, it being forbidden for him to marry so that he could not perpetuate his disgraceful family name."

The ill-fated Russian protected cruiser Zhemchug, her crew in high spirits

Zhemchug Vs the Emden 1914

The cruisers Emden of the German Navy and Zhemchug of the Russian Navy were matched on paper but not in actuality.

A survivor of the crushing Battle of Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese war in 1905, the Russian light cruiser Zhemchug remained in the Pacific Ocean to show the flag of the Tsar in the warm waters of that region. When World War One erupted in 1914 the 3,100-ton Zhemchugtook part in early convoy operations in the Pacific. Her general enemy was the German Pacific squadron of Kaiser Wilhelm II and her particular nemesis was the 3,364- ton German light cruiser Emden. The Emden had separated from the Kaiser's pacific squadron and raided the warm waters far from the European battlefields for months, sinking more than a dozen merchant ships and attacking British colonies. The two ships were well matched on paper; both were relatively new fast ships of a modern design capable of the same speed. The Zhemchug was armed with 8x4.7 inch (120mm) naval guns versus the Emden’s comparable armament of 10x 4.1 inch (105mm) guns.

In her search for the Emden the Zhemchug was brought to the Malaccan Straits where she stalked the Nicobar and Andarman Islands to no avail. Coming up empty handed the Zhemchug put into the Malaysian port of Penang on October 26, 1914. Feeling his ship safe in an allied harbor her Captain, Baron Cherkassov, departed his ship for leave ashore. The good baron left his ship in a deplorable state considering the Emden was thought to be in the region. The ship had no officers on watch as well as no lookouts posted. She was docked to where only one of her guns were able to fire on the harbor entrance, where any enemy would come from, and all of her 120mm ammunition save for a dozen rounds, was locked up. The keys to the ships magazines had been taken ashore with her senior officers for safekeeping. Worse still a number of local prostitutes were taken aboard the ship, further downgrading her crew’s effectiveness.

Zhemchung memorial in Penang (public domain picture)

In the predawn hours of October 28, 1914, another cruiser slowly entered the approaches to Penang. It flew the white ensign of the Royal Navy and had altered her appearance to look like the British cruiser HMS Yarmouth. The mysterious cruiser observed the Zhemchug lying at anchor with her lights on and no protective searchlights or torpedo boats around her. The mysterious cruiser in question was in fact the SMS Emden herself. The German cruiser, under the command of Korvettenkapitän Karl von Müller, quietly crept towards her sleeping target who had just days before been hunting for her. At 0515 and a range of just 400m she struck her British flag and ran up the Imperial German naval ensign while fired her torpedo tubes point blank into the Zhemchug. Working up steam the Emden sped past the stricken cruiser, turned sharply and re-engaged her. She raked the decks of the Russian cruiser at a range of just 700m as she passed with every gun capable of firing doing so. A second torpedo from the Emden finished the Zhemchug off, with the stricken ship settling in 30m of water. The unharmed Emden went onto sink a French destroyer also in the harbor and trade shots with the old French cruiser D'Iberville before making good her escape. The Emden, scourge of the Pacific would find itself sunk by the Australian cruiser Sydney less than a fortnight later.

The sinking of the Zhemchug was a traumatic experience for the Russian Pacific Squadron and virtually ended the Russian effort in that ocean during the war. Eighty-nine officers and men were killed and more than a hundred of the survivors were seriously wounded. These figures were very heavy indeed when you consider the Zhemchug complement was 354 men. Eighty-two of the bodies were recovered and interned in western road cemetery in Penang. The remaining crew was returned to Russia on the auxiliary cruiser Orel who had salvaged some of the Zhemchug 120mm guns in December 1914. Captain Baron Cherkassov as well as his second in command, Senior Lieutenant Kulibinu, was arrested on return to Russia. The two disgraced officers were court-martialed for negligence and summarily stripped of all their ranks and privileges as well as being given a 3 year and 18 month prison sentences respectively. Tsar Nicholas II also went so far as to decree that the Baron was to be sentenced to perpetual bachelorhood, it being forbidden for him to marry so that he could not perpetuate his disgraceful family name.

To this day passing Russian ships drop wreaths in the Malaccan Straits and the harbor of Penang to those men of the cruiser Zhemchug. Russians still gather at the monument to the fallen men of the Zhemchug in the western road cemetery at the end of October every year.

The Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargamers

A fine bunch of Chaps indeed!

Chaps who have dropped in for a cigar & a glass since 14Aug07

Notes regarding images: These are not all my images. In addition to my own pics, I am using various images from around the web, mostly from public sources or private sources used with permission. I have tried to include only images under public domain, creative commons, or fair use. If I have inadvertently violated any copyrights, please inform me and I will remove your images(s) if it an infringement.